The Solitary Rambler

I travel to the pretty town of Ramsbottom at the edge of the West Pennine Moors, a location new to me, but my visit here is to do a walk in the area recommended to me. This exciting adventure for me brings me to a walk high above the town, specifically across Holcombe Moor to eventually visit a fantastic huge monument, which can be seen dominating the hilltop for many miles around.....

It has been lovely to discover that uploading my videos online has led to people subscribing to my YouTube channel. I have also received comments on some of my videos. During 2015 I received a really nice comment from a subscriber praising my video of “Proud in Pendle”. In his comments he recommended I film a walk on Holcombe Hill near Ramsbottom, which had a tower on the hilltop with some interesting history. He said he was sure I would make a great video. I had never heard of Holcombe Hill or Ramsbottom, so I Googled it to find out where it was. It wasn’t a location I had ever visited, but there was something familiar about it, and I think it was because I had probably seen the aforementioned tower from a distance when driving along the M66 between Manchester and Burnley once or twice in the past. I decided it would indeed be an interesting place to shoot a film of “The Solitary Rambler”, so I added it to my list of future projects to film sometime the following year.

On Thursday 14th July 2016 I set out to film “Hilltop of Holcombe”. I arrived in Ramsbottom just after 9am and parked my car in the free car park at the top end of Market Place to commence shooting. Starting beside the railway station I filmed various shots of the town as I walked along Bridge Street and included the “Tilted Vase” in Market Place. Moving on from Ramsbottom I drove up the steep hill to the Peel Tower car park just south of Holcombe village. I walked along Holcombe Old Road into Holcombe village before taking a path leading onto Holcombe Moor. Taking many shots of the wonderful views I eventually turned off at Buckden Wood towards Beetle Hill. At the top I walked across the moors alongside the firing range below Bull Hill, onto Pilgrims’ Cross before finally reaching Peel Tower, where I captured several shots of the great monument. As I climbed back down the hill to the car park and drove off I stopped at a layby on the A56 to get one last shot of the distant view of Holcombe Hill with Peel Tower.

When I started work on the editing, aside from recording the commentary and music, I needed to overdub one of the scenes I had filmed on Harcles Hill. The wind had almost completely muffled the sound when I spoke a line, so I just needed to re-record that line at home and overdub onto the scene. I didn’t have any clear ideas as to the music, but I knew I wanted a dramatic soundtrack, especially for the Peel Tower scenes. I chose to compose the music with a similar sound to parts of my soundtrack I created for “Proud in Pendle”, i.e. the use of nativity choir voices from my keyboard. I eventually came up with a few chords to play with these voices, and from that developed the gentler themes with the string voices for the scenes on Holcombe Moor.